Roderick

I am currently arranging the Dutch Idle Thumbs meeting: if anyone besides the people who've already expressed interest (Osmosisch, ElMuerte, I_Smell and myself) is up for it, please send me your e-mail address and I'll share the planner with you to pick a date somewhere in the back of August. Also for good people from Belgium, West-Germany, Northern France and Englanders who might be in the neighborhood. But not Luxemburghers, who are vile people and we should turn our backs to them.

So far the only "help" we've been able to give with regards to Friendship is being an audience to this particular social endeavor.

I'm incredibly charmed by this well thought-out attempt. Please continue and update us on the Olly Moss Friendship Situation. Both you and he deserve this.

We've bested the tyrant, hooray!!!

Tycho raised an objection to it above, but I'm also okay with doing it every other week. I wouldn't mind catching my breath after Tokyo Story. And the list of people in the club (the list of AWESOME people) isn't so terribly long that it'll take more than a few months.

Isn't Mary Sue a rather disparaging term used to identify badly written characters that are obvious stand-ins for the author, hollow expressions of wish fulfilment? We should be careful to bandy about this term, since it's full of loopholes and vaguery, and at the end of the day is as much about a personal feeling you have with a character as it approaches some objective criticism. It's a limited term. The best use is as a geuzennaam for this awesome website.

Not a problem at all, feel free to post whenever whatever!

Took a while, but I finally saw the whole thing. Here are my initial thoughts, before I engage yours above: So, no one here is having fun. I mean it, no single character in Tokyo Story allows themselves the luxury of enjoying life. Instead, it's all just a gruelling slog, a joyless going-through-the-motions. It's like they're all quaking under some terrible feeling of guilt (possibly stemming from the war?). And so you get this film, where the concept of enjoying life is an alien thing. It starts with an elderly couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their children – not because they'd like to, but because this might be the last chance they get before they're too old. For the children it's all a big burden. They're busy with their lives and their work, but of course publicly they have to express how much they would've liked to take their parents to the kabuki theater. The bothersome thing is, I don't think any of these people are cold, callous or insidious. They just seem incapable of enjoying themselves. Some of them retreat in their work and snide remarks, others, like the elders, hide behind a wall of politeness. Hooo boy, grandpa and grandma. At first they seem so kind and loving, but their dysfunction shows later on. Can't sleep because of a loud party? Let's not mention it ever. Concerned for the well-being of your daughter-in-law? Keep on smiling, do not stop smiling as you address this in the weakest way possible. They never show their true feelings to anyone, not even to the other. Underneath their politeness they share the same amount of disappointment and anxiety as their offspring. Needless to say, everyone knows what everyone else thinks and feels, but no one says anything and the theater can continue. This is Japanese society at its most infuriating. Ozu depicts this in the boringest way possible. That's not a complaint: the events of the movie and its characters are actually quite compelling, but he frames everything as tedious and uneventful as he can. Whenever something actually happens in the story, be it an illness, a death in the family or the trip home, he sets it up and then skips over it. We're left with the fallout. We learn things through a telegram or have to infer that something did or didn't happen through dialogue. Everything is in the service of making the viewer feel that these people are trapped in a social vice of their own creation, that all life and adventure has been sucked out of their world. That makes Tokyo Story dramatically uncompelling and I had to watch it in three sittings. I almost fell asleep during one. At every turn, Ozu ensures that the stakes are low, that we understand that no one is the bad guy, no one is actually in danger and no one certainly is going to cause a scene. Everything stays hidden under the poisonous fake friendliness of Japanese life in the fifties, right up to the final moment. Grandpa is sitting in his house, alone, pondering over the death of his wife. A cheerful neighbor drops by and peeks in through the window. After a small exchange of pleasantries, she concludes, smiling, “You're going to be lonely,” and leaves him immediately. I don't know if Ozu sought to accuse Japanese society of this behavior, or how moralistic it is. The final picture of the lonely parent certainly seems to point a finger at the children, but I don't see it quite as their exclusive failing. Like I explained above, this entire family is not communicating - how can you expect engagement from any of them towards the other? This is as much a failing of the parents as it is of the children. The one thing this film didn't do was grab me emotionally. It was too... outlandish for that. I just have a hard time identifying with people who won't communicate when it would remedy so much, be it through societal pressures or their own family dynamic. That made it more of an abstract piece for me to observe rather than an emotional journey.

Good to see you've found closure, Merus, for you, your family and your brother. Justice was served, and hopefully your brother will/has recuperated well.

Referring back to Chris' Star Citizen befuddlement; if only he had listened more to Bowie, he'd have known the instructions to how to operate a ship: 'Take your protein pills and put your helmet on...'

Damn, now I wish I'd seen it. Die Mannschaft!

It most certainly is!

A week later is tough for me, I'm on a convention all weekend. I'd say we should go for daytime with possible extension into the evening, grab a bite somewhere? Let's make it memorable.

That's understandable, though we'd be happy to see you of course. To the rest, say that I would propose Saturday 23rd or Sunday 24th of August for the Dutch meetup. Say. How would you respond to that?

That would seem the most reasonable place to meet. How's everyone doing with vacation time? I've got a ton of time in August to meet up. Lu! Get your ass in here!

A painting befitting Junior Mints!

Watching the intro, I will now. That's some stellar stuff.

That's quite the camouflage you've got going! That'll surely come in handy when you head into the swamp to shoot a hippo, like you've always dreamed.

Epicon was a failboat that I saw coming a mile away. It's a convention organised way too ambitiously by a few companies with a commercial target. Compare that to the vibrant anime convention scene in the Netherlands, which is organised by and through the community intself. Those are the events you want to visit: Animecon, Abunai, maybe FACTS in Belgium. Alternatively, go to Gamescom in Cologne (the biggest thing in Europe), and I don't know if they still do FirstLook over here. That might be worth it. My bet is that Epicon won't see another year. Osmosisch, get your northern ass down to the south.

So, how are we feeling about this? To be sure the setting of the American war of independence sounds rife with cool stories, characters, though less so interesting architecture to climb, and conflict, but at the moment I'm still a little disappointed that we didn't get to see revolutionary/Napoleonic France. That's purely based on personal preference though. I look forward to seeing how this game will propel the series into the future. Not just in terms of story, but especially from a gameplay standpoint. It would be good if some real changes to the core gameplay were made to reflect the changing times and ensure the franchise doesn't get bogged down in conventions, much like the Zelda topic we've all been discussing lately.

Yes!! We were both at Epicon, a pretty disappointing gaming convention in the Netherlands, and we didn't know until per accident I scouted a 'No Time To Explain' shirt on someone while wrapping up. Then, Jeff Goldblumming and Babooing commenced. I-smell performed a terrifying bear hug, and there was literally no time to explain, since I had a party waiting for me. If only I'd known you were there, I'd have dropped by to game & chat! Now we'll have to wait for the anticipated Dutch Thumb Dumb Times Meeting.

A chance to sit on the Iron Throne and plug my book? Why, those things go marvellously together! And remember, you can't spell 'marvellously' without 'lousy'!

I'm not sure that was what I was getting at. I certainly don't consider the first part boring. And I was surprised by the steepness of the passage as well! You don't realize it until the man start's sliding down.

Yes, and Kanal absolutely puts you on the wrong foot with its opening half hour, which is 100% without heightened sense of reality and seems to head into war drama. Then, boom. I love how it throws you like that, you really have no idea what's waiting for you when you first hit the sewers.

Switch out Friday the 13th for Austin Powers in Goldmember and you've pretty much got my story. Especially these Japanese 2+ hour monstrosities can be really daunting to get into. But every time I took the effort to get into one of these film, it paid off in a major way.